January 14, 2018

Lest we allow the culture war red meat to block progress on immigration restriction, let's answer Trump's exasperated question about why there's so much immigration from shithole countries rather than, say, Norway -- because Norway is already a nice place to live, and you'd have to be crazy to throw away a high standard of living, plus hundreds or thousands of years of historical cultural rootedness in that land, in order to move to America.

So, anyone seriously arguing that our immigration policy should be to import boatloads of Norwegians instead of boatloads of Nigerians must tell us -- where are the boatloads of Norwegians going to come from? Not from Norway, which is a first-world country.

In fiscal year 2017, only 50 people got immigrant visas from Norway. If we shut down immigration for all other countries except Norway, that might rise to 500 -- at most 5,000? It's always going to be a drop in the bucket, and that includes adding all the other first-world countries as well. They already have nice countries that they are deeply rooted in.

Back when those countries had a far lower standard of living than America, there were boatloads of Norwegians, Italians, Germans, Russians, Irish, etc., who immigrated here. The Ellis Island period.

But now that the differential between America and those countries is not very steep, it's not worth the cost (economic and social/cultural) for them to move. Maybe the Balts and Slavs want to move here still, but not the Europeans who we would consider most similar to ourselves.

This reveals the crux of the immigration problem: because it is entirely based on seeking a higher material standard of living, it will only draw immigrants from much worse-off countries than the destination country. And given the size of the global population that is much worse-off than America, that means gigantic numbers -- billions -- who want to over-run our society.

On the demand side, it is the same: wealthy and powerful groups bring immigrants in by the boatload in order to improve the material standard of living for the wealthy and powerful, in other words to serve as cheap labor. That includes employees for a business run by an elite group, or the domestic servants for elites who no longer tend to their own households.

Since the goal is cheap labor, the powers that be would never draw immigrants from another nice country, but only from poor countries. And since their businesses require large numbers of workers, that means boatloads rather than a few here and there will be flooding in.

The paranoid and conspiratorial take on this is that the elites are trying to replace the existing culture or genepool per se. We can put this to a test by contrasting immigration from an alien culture that is rich, like Japan, vs. from a more similar culture that is poor, like Poland.

In 2017, there was essentially the same number coming from either country (1,600 from Poland and 1,500 from Japan). And Poland has only 1/3 the population of Japan, so this is a much larger chunk of their total population who is leaving their homeland to come here. That is not to mention the 3,700 who came from Russia and the 4,800 who came from Ukraine.

When forced to choose, our elites flood us with cheap labor that is culturally similar (Slavs) rather than expensive labor that is culturally alien and in more abundant supply to boot (Japan).

The goal, then, is not to worry about the qualitative make-up of immigrants -- but to restrict their sheer quantity. Quantity is the underlying cause, quality the superficial symptom. If you open the gates to 1 million immigrants a year, who is going to want to uproot themselves from their home country? If you restrict immigration to, say 100 or 1,000 a year, then you could do some real quality control. In 2017, Great Britain sent 2,300 immigrants here -- and some of them may even have been British.

Best-case scenario, we get most of our small number of immigrants from good countries. Worst-case scenario, we win the battle for small numbers, but lose on where they come from -- shithole countries, or a random lottery, or whatever.

Still, 100 or 1,000 Salvadoreans a year -- and nobody else, from anywhere else -- would be a major victory. They would be just a drop in the bucket of our 300 million, and their wage-lowering effect would not be felt, nor could they take over entire communities and disrupt or replace the existing genepool and culture.

Yes, 100 Scots would be better than 100 Salvadoreans -- but we can't lose the war over the sheer numbers just for a feel-good Pyrrhic victory over the source of mass immigration. Which, again, is not possible anyway -- mass migration will necessarily give us the bad countries, not the good ones.

On real-world outcomes, the quantity focus is superior to the quality focus. But it is also rhetorically superior, allowing broader coalitions to be formed and therefore bringing more political capital and will (or at least acquiescence) to bear on the effort.

Face the facts: most Americans are not going to sign onto a movement that allows the number of immigrants to remain mostly the same, but drawn from Northwest Europe and shutting out the Third World. To them it would feel racist, uncaring, elitist, whatever. But if the whole world is shut out together, they wouldn't feel like they were targeting one place or another.

And more importantly, it wouldn't feel elitist because we would not be championing immigrants who are better than us (who could "improve our society"), but trying to make room for and lift up the millions of our fellow citizens who are already here, struggling to make ends meet. The last thing in the world they need is a billion more immigrants to compete against in the already Dickensian labor and housing markets.

Most of those struggling here are white, BTW, as blacks are only 10-15% of the population and the majority of whites are not 1-percenter yuppies with no worries.

Conservatives seem to never tire of making losing arguments and alienating potential allies, especially about race, and especially if they get to feel clever. How clever is it to suggest that there are actually a large number of Northwest Europeans who would want to immigrate here? Just go ask them -- they like it where they are.

Normal people recognize that there are no such hordes of Brits and Swedes trying to immigrate here, and they find it downright delusional to suggest that such hordes would be pouring in -- if not for those CULTURAL MARXISTS who are using all their might to block the wave of Swedes, while waving in the Swazis.

Normal people also recognize that it is the difference in the material standard of living that primarily determines who is let in. Whether they approve, for reasons of lifting up the global poor at the expense of their fellow citizens; or disapprove, for reasons of wanting to keep out cheap labor that lowers the welfare of the American working class.

Secondarily, the elites may want to maximize diversity in order to keep the commoners atomized and not trusting of one another, unwilling and unable to band together against their common elite enemies. Divide and conquer. But as we saw with Poland vs. Japan, they are primarily concerned about maximizing cheap labor rather than cultural diversity.

Rather than a message of "We rock, you suck," restrictionsists should say, "Sorry, but this country is already fuckin' full."

If anything, our population should get smaller, not bigger. We need to simplify, not complexify. We're not a virgin wide-open land anymore with abundant resources everywhere. Our per capita well-being is already stretched thin, as we slam against carrying capacity. Intrinsic growth -- births over deaths -- might make us rise a little, but not nearly like immigration can, where we've added tens of millions overnight.

Facing the problem of clawing our collective way out of neo-Gilded Age scarcity, we care only about the quantity of people who the elites are trying to dump into this over-crowded country of ours. It doesn't matter whether our wages are undercut by Ukrainians or Ugandans, and whether our culture gets replaced by Chileans or Chinese.

Take care of the quantity problem, and the quality problem gets solved automatically -- all while making an appeal that is more truthful, insightful, and bandwagon-jump-on-able. And no pointless debates and endlessly complicated categories and formulas for who is allowed in -- a single, low number, and who cares after that.

Do you want to win over the masses or shout louder into the echo chamber?

14 comments:

The name is stupid -- "identitarian" means what "racist" does in plain English, and will fool people no more than "race realist" did.

You idiotically think it's a mere fig-leaf reform to reduce immigration from 1 million per year down to 100 or 1,000 per year, the numbers given in the post, just because we wouldn't be overtly obsessing over the race or ethnicity of those precious few who we let in.

You don't understand anything about the structure or history of our economy, and aren't interested in learning.

You also don't understand the long failed history of the framework you're advocating in off-topic derails again and again. "Identity politics for white people" is not new, and has failed more and more over time -- now with repeated disavowals by the would-be re-aligner President Trump.

You also don't understand how badly the GOP has fucked the country over on measures of economics and cultural cohesion, arguably worse than the Democrats have, when you factor in the non-racial angles about economic decline and de-industrialization leading to so much of the degeneracy we see today.

How outside-the-box of you identitarians to sanctify the GOP, a party that you feel could never be worse than the Dumbocraps. You're like aspiring Boomers -- learn from their failures, and get a clue about populist economics rather than pushing more retarded right-wing Gramsci-ism.

You sound like you're 19 years old, typical of the Alt-Right, so you may mature out of it and learn more as you grow up.

But I was way beyond where you guys where when I was 19 -- part of the anti-globalization and anti-imperialist movements, going to Quebec City to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas, descending on DC to protest the Iraq War before it had even started.

You guys may be getting stuck in a rut already, but we'll see after a few years. So far, though, it doesn't look good judging from where you guys are at compared to two years ago.

Your point about “sorry, but this country is already full,” brings up a thought:

I can remember when concerns about overpopulation were once a common topic of discussion among environmentalists and the general public in the late 1960s-early 1970s, and that overpopulation would turn us into a “shithole country” by the year 2000 unless people stopped procreating so prolifically.

But for some reason, those concerns are no longer at the forefront of discussion, and you never hear the greens say a peep about it.

Overpopulation is at the root of just about every environmental problem, from the dreaded “climate change” to deforestation, species endangerment, resource depletion, and your garden variety air and water pollution.

The point is, our population would have remained stable for the last 40+ years were it not for immigration. This would have meant A LOT less environmental damage.

If I wanted to get liberals on board with dealing with uncontrolled immigration, one angle I’d take is its effects on the environment.

Right, liberals are the natural group to be concerned with over-population, as their views are adapted to surviving in a "K-selected" rather than an "r-selected" ecological niche.

K, meaning the population is near carrying capacity and per capita resources are stretched thin, pop growth is minimal and mostly stable. And r, meaning the population is well below carrying capacity and per capita resources are abundant, pop growth is exponential and unstable.

They have abandoned that natural focus because the issue became contaminated, in their minds, by association with conservatives or nationalists talking about the quality of those who would be the excess population -- filthy immigrants, the 10 kids being pumped out by every welfare-using single mother in a trailer park or ghetto, and so on.

Both sides should have done some polling to see which framing was more palatable to the general public, and gone with that. Each side would get their desired goal, but their ideological victory might not happen -- maybe each would have to meet the other half-way in the framing, or maybe one would get their framing and the other would have to keep theirs quiet and practice ideological taqqiya.

As part of a general trend, the two sides don't want to do any sort of compromise, and have polarized themselves into puritanical sects. That began around the mid-1970s, and really took off after that.

But even as recently as the 1980s, the Left was still talking about these issues, including over-population, rather than identity politics:

And as late as the mid-1990s, liberal Americans (not just activist groups) were against the open borders immigration policies that were becoming the norm. They were against work permits for illegals, wanted lower rather than higher immigration, etc.:

There's a strong generational component to polarization, with Silents and especially Boomers being the most polarized -- and having been that way for their entire lives -- while Gen X-ers and Millennials are far more Independent, and have been and will be so for their entire lives.

The difference is constant across the decades, so it's a true generational effect, not just changes across the lifespan.

The most hyper-competitive generations in world history are not going to compromise in the interest of meeting their greater goals.

Especially not when those concessions would be merely ideological while getting their way 100% on the actual outcome -- for the hyper-competitive, the ideological badges matter more than the real outcomes. It's like a sport or capture the flag.

For the post-airhead generations, they will compromise to build broad winning coalitions, rather than pound the table and only hang onto loser fringes.

In this way, the white nationalist / identitarian / Alt-Right are even more Boomer-ocious than the Boomers -- obsessed purely with ideology and culture rather than tangible outcomes and materialism, and hell-bent on polarizing until there's only 1 person left on any "side". They're the ultimate dead-end, trying to live like their parents in a world that no longer allows for such living. It's political downward mobility.

The goal, then, for the conservative or nationalist side is to find ways to frame the appeal for immigration restriction that would resonate with liberals and moderates. And if the conservative framing would downright repulse those would-be allies, keep it to themselves -- fine for expressing freely on a niche forum like MPC, but not in real life or in a general-public part of the internet.

There doesn't seem to be any more blood to be squeezed from the stone of pointing out how shitty Haiti and the Haitians are, to audiences who would be receptive to that argument. It's pretty obvious.

The work to be done is building coalitions with other large groups who *don't* resonate with that argument, and getting them on board the same policy goal and tangible outcome (closing the borders).

One of the few conservative -- corporeal -- threats posed by immigrants that liberals would resonate with is risk of epidemic diseases when effective population size increases through migration that connects formerly distinct regions, particularly when they're introducing pathogens into a region that has had no chance to evolve defenses against them.

In fact the Nader 2000 platform had something in it, or maybe Nader himself making comments, about needing reduced immigration because of the risk of spreading diseases. It can be framed as managing and solving a public health problem, which liberals like, rather than expressing and promoting fear of contamination by those dirty foreigners.

I'd rather get closed borders *and* have more people wise up to how filthy the incoming foreigners are -- but if that message isn't going to sway enough people, then I'll keep that quiet and make it about managing public health according to simple applied science and epidemiology.

"The most hyper-competitive generations in world history are not going to compromise in the interest of meeting their greater goals."

What about the dipshits who caused the Civil War? Per Strauss and Howe, The Transcendental generation (born in the early 1800's) were the worst generation in American history as of the early 1990's. By the time they attained full power in the mid 1800's, they trampled all over younger generations as much as they trampled on each other.

Later Silents (the true 60's generation) can be annoying and sociopathic, but IMO and IM experience the ones born in the late 20's-mid 30's have done as much, if not more, good as they've done bad. The worst thing you can say about a lot of them is that they're insecure and neurotic.

Also WRT generations, Millennial and Boomer women have had almost equal suicide rates. while X-ers have a moderately lower level. I think your notion that being physically traumatized (challenged?) at a young age in an outgoing period, and having parents and peers too busy with having a life to pity you, girds up your psychological armor before we fully transition to a cocooning period in which X-ers (or GIs) know better than to sweat the small stuff. Problem is, the current combination of a high cocooning and high striving mood has given extroverted (but psychologically fragile) Boomer elders a huge advantage; stolid X-ers won't take the keys away from Boomers, and the teeming masses of Boomers wouldn't deign to share more of the spotlight with X-ers (a generation against whom the Boomers have always stood) anyway.

The scary thing is that it's 1940's births who are simultaneously the most over-privileged, the most powerful, yet also are the most psychologically immature. They had the luxury, the time, etc. to accrue the superficial trappings of sophistication, but they spent their childhood and most or all of their adolescence in the paradise of the immediate post WW2 era, where their elders and their peers didn't teach them a damn thing about humility, patience, or respect for the past...Nor did they realize how damn lucky they were to be born into a time in which so many ills, once thought to have been permanent features of human life, had been seemingly cured. As we've entered deeper into a striving era, all the weaknesses of Boomers have been magnified.....Judging from 70's and early 80's NFL games, Boomer professionals were still capable of modesty and dignity, but over the last 30 years every knock on Boomers has been reinforced (thick skinned, hot headed, envious, selfish, etc.). It's great that you insisted that your kids be treated better in the 80's and 90's than they would've been in the 60's or 70's, but what else didja do?

Anyway, might a change be in the offing once cocooning lifts over the next 5-10 years? X-ers have spent too much time blocking blows, instead of delivering them, since the early 90's. Boomers developed tremendous ego strength from spending much of their adulthood in an outgoing era, then when cocooning (and really high striving) began to hit us in the 1990's, Boomers simultaneously developed greater delusions about their importance while X-ers were socialized to be culture war bystanders and generational punching bags at a time when the Boomers badly needed 2nd opinions from those who were not their peers. Boomers have never been more badly in need of a reality check, but most X-ers (and Millennials) due not have the nerve to relay the message.

BTW, it's to the point that later Silents and Boomers get to be the permanent leaders for whichever cause any of us might be supporting. The overwhelming power among each side is concentrated in those over 50. In the 1960's and 70's (an egalitarian period with elder elites from less entitled generations), it was common for 30 and 40 somethings to gain power and respect as rising figures.....These days 45 yr old X-ers are still seen as expendable meat, foot soldiers, for the grinder operated by late Silents and Boomers. Jared Taylor on a podcast talked about how it's easy for the Dems to pretend it's the 60's when for the last 25 years people born in the 30's and 40's are still given ample power which they have no interest in giving up. Remember how long it took Al Franken to retire, after he was disgraced?

regarding the discussion here in the comments over the generations and what they have done and what characteristics they have, yadda yadda, this discussion is nonsensical...this political correctness/mass immigration mess has nothing to do with the generations whatsoever...it has been driven by corporate greed and accomplished via propaganda and indoctrination in school...it has nothing all to do with the generations or age brackets or any of that...period.

".it has nothing all to do with the generations or age brackets or any of that...period."

Don't be so quick to dismiss Agnostic's and Feryl's well-thought out comments. It does have to do with generations, because the older ones were status-striving and pursued the policies which began rising inequality.

For instance, militarism is one area where the younger generations - Gen X and Millenials - have clearly learned the lessons of the past, showing much less support for the Iraq War or future wars, than the Boomers and Silents.

The point about generations is who is partisan vs. non-partisan, and who will therefore be willing to build broad coalitions to get things done.

Silents and especially Boomers have been the most partisan generations, from young adulthood all the way through decrepitude. Gen X-ers and Millennials recoil from the idea of making every political project into an apocalyptic Super Bowl of team Red vs. team Blue.

The generational angle also points to the Bernie rather than Trump movement as the change agent's most likely source.

Trumpians are Boomer-driven and therefore more partisan, while Bernie people are X/Millennial-driven and less partisan. That's who's going to change things going forward.

Among Bernie primary voters, about 15% voted Trump in the general, compared to only 2% of Hillary primary voters going with Trump in the general. That's a healthy level of non-partisan behavior.

What if it were the other way around? Trump gets robbed of the nomination, endorses the GOP nom -- say, Bush -- and Bernie has an upset win in the Dem primary. So it's Bernie vs. Bush in the general.

Among Trump primary voters, how many would choose Bernie over Bush? Probably not better than 15% and maybe far below that, because GOP primary voters overall and including Trump primary voters are more likely to be Boomers than Bernie primary voters, and thus more partisan.

"Trumpians are Boomer-driven and therefore more partisan, while Bernie people are X/Millennial-driven and less partisan. That's who's going to change things going forward."

Time's running out on conservative culture warriors. The trad. GOP has a major blackhole in it's support base....It's not just the obvious weakness with voters who are neither white nor Hispanic, it's also amongst under 40 voters. Nobody born after 1976 actually believes in the GOP's smelly brew of Xtian fundamentalism and trickle down economics.

The die-hard Republicans who think that voting for the Dems=voting for communism and infanticide are going to well, die out eventually. Since white people born in the late 50's/60's are a massive cohort often that buys into Trad. GOP nonsense, it's allowed the GOP to build up a good sized voting/funding base from which to win a lot of local elections, with state-wide elections being a tougher task but still fairly doable as long as they don't have terrible candidates. I understand that a lot of early Boomers are pretty liberal, and they often snicker over how many "junior" Boomers bought into the Reagan Revolution back in the 80's when they were 20-something.

According to Neil Howe, GOP support begins to progressively decline with people born after about 1972. Right now there's a huge cohort of 1960's/very early 70's born white people who are keeping the GOP on life support, often times voting for their generational peers (the GOP's extant elected officials are quite a bit younger than their Dem counterparts). The Dems being so crusty makes sense, since early Boomers are grossed out by the thought of letting Reagan's youth into their ranks.

The GOP as it's been known is finished. They desperately try to figure out ways to appeal to non-whites and Millennials; but these "autopsies", funded by the usual cucks and yuppies, never consider the idea of changing the party's ideology. Instead, it's always wishful thinking that the same ideas will work as long as they're packaged the right way. People'll drink the poison if we keep the skull and bones off the package.